"A Perfect Size 4"
When I was in junior high, I read V.C. Andrews and The Baby-sitters Club, not Sweet Valley High. I do remember seeking out the one where someone named, I think, Regina dies of a cocaine overdose. But beyond that, I wasn’t interested. I just couldn’t relate to Jessica and Elizabeth Wakefield. I was neither the good twin nor the bad twin—I was awkward and chubby and socially retarded, not beautiful, rich, blonde, popular, or thin. (I know what you’re thinking—that Cathy Dollanganger was also beautiful, rich, popular, and thin. Well she was also having sex with her brother in that attic, which you have to agree is a trump card.)
You may be wondering where I’m going with all of this. Never fear, I do have a point! It all brings me around to the e-mails I got today from Robin and Erin, alerting me to this development in the Sweet Valley High series: the books are being updated, changing the Wakefield twins’ size from “a perfect size 6” to “a perfect size 4.”
[J]ust to make sure preteen and teenaged girl readers are sufficiently insecure about their bodies, the publisher made the “perfect” clothing size a couple of notches more restrictive. It seems kids in the 80s lived by totally fat standards. Also, Sweet Valley High students now have their own anonymous blog, presumably to hatefully bully the fattest of their classmates.
(Robin also provides a link to this site, which as she puts it “rips the original SVH books a new one, often identifying the damaging messages it has about weight and looks.” Thanks for the link, Robin; good times.)
My first reaction was, indeed, to feel indignant and infuriated. But now that I think about it, really, it doesn’t make much of a difference. Elizabeth and Jessica were always “perfect” in a way that I found it impossible to relate to, and the fact that their bodies were “perfect” was no small part of that. And beyond that, I think that the size change isn’t that they’re actually being made smaller, only that vanity sizing has come into play. Maybe size 4 is really the new size 6, and it’s not the Wakefield twins that have gotten smaller; it’s the numbers on the labels in their jeans.
Posted by mo pie
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I actually do think it’s the labels. When you think about the fact that back then, there was no size “0”, and size twos were few and far between outside of modeling, it has to be the shift in the size labels, not the sizes.
Of course, I’m from the seventies myself, where you weren’t even a “half-size” or a “women’s size” (the term plus-size had yet to coined) unless you were bigger than a 16-18.
By the time those books came out I was reading the full-blown adult romance novels. No need to bother with the kiddie stuff! The women in those were described as barbie-like, so it was easy enough to just disregard.
You make a great point, Mo, and I said today that I don’t think there is anything wrong with using a clothing size as a descriptor, as much as I object to tacking on “perfect” to it. What is perfect anyway? Why is that needed? I probably shouldn’t be surprised, but that sort of language rankles me so much, and the idea that twenty years later, we’re still thinking it’s OK to tell girls that a clothing size equals value makes me mad.
And I know you didn’t mean anything by it, but the girls who do like and did like books like SVH are just as worthy of being rallied around as the girls who read VC Andrews, if not more so.
Which I totally did, too. :)
I never read the SVH books. When I started reading, before I got my library card, I read the books my mom had at home (and they definitely weren’t age-appropriate for a grade-schooler, things like Valley of the Dolls and Doctors’ Wives). So if it wasn’t a book about horses or dogs, or science fiction, I wasn’t reading teen fiction at all, I was reading adult fiction (and for my money, after I read my first 4 Harlequins, I decided they sucked as literature, same basic theme in every one, only the names and places changed). And SVH wasn’t around when I was a teen, back in the dark ages of the 60’s and 70’s (according to my grandkids *g*), at least, I don’t remember them.
First, thanks for posting my blog!
I think for me, it is not so much the number, but the fact that it was emphasized so much on the press release. And having “perfect” in front of it creates a whole other issue.
Well… I did read SVH as a preteen and I did both identify with and fail to measure up to the Wakefield sisters: I also had blond hair and “eyes the exact color of the Pacific” (LOLOL), but they were beautiful and I perceived that I, somehow, was not. I also didn’t understand what size, exactly, a 6 would be: I was still in odd-number junior sizes, but I DID know that my size was double-digits and theirs wasn’t.
I can’t get het up enough to write angry letters to the publisher – I’m a literature doctoral student, and I’m vaguely embarrassed about my youthful book follies ;) – but I am glad the size change is getting some talk. It’s a sign of the times worth mentioning and critiquing – we should talk about what it could mean to shrink the novel’s heroines, why it was so important to mention their dress size and height in every book to begin with, and the related conversations about why sizes are just another fluctuating arbitrary measurement of “worth” like weight and BMI.
Why is thier size even worth mentioning?
I didn’t read those either. Though I did read the Babysitters’ Club, and I don’t recall any physical descriptions mentioning what size the girls were. That strikes me as irrelevant in the extreme, as well as dangerous. If they must describe them, why don’t they just say “slim” and leave it at that?
I was an early developer, and I was totally aware when shopping with my friends that they were all size 10 or 12 while I was a 14. I’m so glad there weren’t any books telling me I ought to be aiming for a six (I wouldn’t have known about the difference between US and UK sizes back then.)
In, oh, Babysitters book 2, Stacey was very skinny because she’d only recently been diagnosed with diabetes, and the girls thought she might have an eating disorder because she wouldn’t ever eat their food. That’s all I recall on the subject.
On the whole, I preferred Paula Danziger, in whose books not everyone was a raving beauty, or skinny, and people occasionally did things like tweeze their eyebrows off by mistake.
Or The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which was a bit short on female characters at all, to be honest, but did keep the physical descriptions blissfully vague.
Indeed, the labels have changed. I’m old enough to remember when the current size 10 (Canadian) was size 14.
A 6 then is like a 2 now, not a 4. Apparently the twins have gained weight.
I loved SVH. My favorite book was when Elizabeth had the motorcycle accident and started acting like Jessica. Such frothy confections, those books. Complete escapism for me.
But before I read those books, I read the “Little House on the Prairie” series 20 times. Now Laura Ingalls Wilder I could relate to.
Anne of Green Gables, too (I’m now shamelessly reading this just to reminisce about children’s books).
Actually, the Anne books are reasonably body-positive: Anne is thin, but her best friend Diana is chubby, at least from their later teens onward. She’s still described as pretty, and she gets married before Anne does.
Laura Ingalls was jealous of Nellie Olsen for being “willowy”, though, wasn’t she? Maybe the nineteenth century wasn’t exactly a halcyon age in that respect either.
(Not that I’m suggesting that getting married is the be-all and end-all for modern women! But it does happen a lot as plot-resolution in the Anne books.)
You bring up a good point with the vanity sizing, but realistically, how many girls today are aware of size differences? I wasn’t aware of vanity sizing until just a few years ago and I’m celebrating my last birthday this year (29). The series re-release was a perfect opportunity for Random House to completely remove any mention of size at all. But instead, the size became more stringent in a time when eating disorders are at an all-time high.
Laura Ingalls was jealous of Nellie Olsen for being “willowy”, though, wasn’t she? Maybe the nineteenth century wasn’t exactly a halcyon age in that respect either.
The actress Sarah Bernhardt was actually criticized for being too thin and was called ugly when she visited the U.S. in the 1880s, while plus-size Lillian Russell was praised for her beauty. A decade later, Bernhardt was hailed for her beauty, while Russell began her first – but not last – diet. Fatness was revered until about the late nineteenth century, when a number of factors contributed in a shift in cultural standards on weight.
The “perfect” in “perfect size ___” means (as far as I know) that the person wears the same size for pants, skirts, shirts, and dresses. I am not a “perfect” anything because I need a 22 shirt/jacket/coat while I can wear an 18 vest, a 16 pant, and a 14 skirt (assuming that it’s a ‘circle’ and not a pencil skirt) because I have a Rack of Doom, Shoulders of a Linebacker, a bootie that just won’t quit, and a 15″ (or greater) difference between my waist and hips.
Adi V., I think you’re right in that the “perfect” used to refer to having the same size proportion top and bottom. Also, back in the 70s, I seem to remember the existence of “half sizes,” which may also relate to the “perfect size whatever” concept.
That said, the term is no longer universally understood, so if they’re editing and updating the texts to reflect the new sizing standards, then they should have dropped the term “perfect” as well. Given that they didn’t suggests to me that they’re using the girls’ size as a positive character-defining trait, which is icky. Which is not to say that they shouldn’t describe the girls’ appearance. It’s just that they shouldn’t be adding overt value statements to those descriptions, especially in books targeted to young women.
I was a big fan of the SVH series until Elizabeth got kidnapped by Carl the psycho-obsessed orderly and they did a story about the twins’ twin ancestors and tried to turn them into Nancy Drew. Actually, the stories that featured other characters instead of the twins were more interesting to me.
One of my favorites featured Penny Ayala, the conservatively dressed and “plain” newspaper editor who put up a mock personal ad. One guy started writing to her and they planned to meet at the mall, but when he saw her, he chickened out and left. But in the perfect world of Sweet Valley, he realized what a jerk he was and they ended up together.
I remember trying to dress like Elizabeth in the 80s and realizing as a fat girl, I couldn’t do it. I never tucked in my shirts and button down was for the true preppies, LOL. Khaki chinos? I’d be laughed out of the school. But size 6 isn’t fat. I don’t know why they’d change the size. I don’t why they’d bring back the books in the first place. They are dated, a product of the 80s when the whole “Valley Girl” persona was in fashion.
Honestly? I loved these books when I was, oh, in 5th grade- and I can’t for the life of me even remember that they mentioned the size!
Anyway, even though it might have more to do with the fact that size 6 then is now a smaller number than them wanting to make it harder on girls, I think the re-release would have been a great opportunity for them to just, I dunno… Get rid of the size stuff? I mean, who really cares?
I have to say I think I had the same experience with the SVH books as Mo–just unrelatable, really. I read a few of them, but I didn’t need a book to see people blonder and thinner than me held up as elite standards–they were everywhere I looked, and I was never going to be one of them, so reading about them? Not fun.
About Anne of GG–the first books might seem size positive, but when I re-read the whole series a year or two ago, I remember being horrified at the way some characters were depicted- in the later books–can’t remember if it had to do with size or with prettyness in general, but I do remember I got rid of the rest of the series b/c I had no intention of reading it again. Ever.
The LIW/Nellie Oleson thing–I think the “willowy” thing had more to do with height and general body type than weight per se. Laura’s described as being sturdy and short, but not roly-poly or chubby. And in general, throughout the books, Laura’s strength is repeatedly portrayed as a good thing. She’s tomboyish and hardy and those things are repeatedly of use to her family.
Oh no no no, you can’t tell me anything bad about Anne of Green Gables! La la la la la I can’t hear you!
I read all the Anne books out loud to my younger sibs when I was in my late teens, and I don’t remember anything terrible, despite being at a very intolerant age… I honestly don’t remember anything dreadfully anti-feminist. (Ruby Gillis is punished rather hard for being flirty and superficial, but then I didn’t like her much anyway.)
You’re right about the descriptions in the “Little House” books. Sturdy, and not with a very narrow waist (Laura doesn’t like wearing her corsets to bed, so her waist isn’t deformed by lacing). I don’t think Nellie Oleson had to throw herself into farm work.
There’s no small amount of ridiculousness to the SVH books. Size issues are only part of the head-fuckery: Elizabeth’s a condescending snot and Jessica’s a blossoming sociopath. For a fat kid who didn’t have any friends, i couldn’t relate to them at all. When i wanted to read fantasy, i was far more likely to read the Earth’s Children series. I could relate more to Ayla for the abuses she overcame… and i have a wacky fascination for archaeological bits.
The honest truth is that i would read damn near anything when i was younger. The unabridged Les Miserables, a slew of Stephen King novels, some James Thurber, a fair amount of Ogden Nash poetry, VC Andrews, LM Montgomery, and every single National Geographic that i could get my hands on.
Reading was an escape, it was a way to make-believe i was watching someone else’s life, rather than dealing with my own. Which is probably why i don’t read nearly as much as i used to – i rather like my life these days (not saying that everyone views reading that way).
When I said I could relate to Laura Ingalls, I was refering to her curiosity, her gumption and her ability to see the world the way it was, rather than the way the powerful want the world to be seen.
Remember the scene on the prairie when the Native Americans are marching out of the prairie and Laura doesn’t understand why they have to leave? (She then decides she wants a woman’s papoose because it stares at her with big brown eyes.)
I also recall the scene of the wolves encircling their house, howling at the enormous moon to be one of the most moving and spiritual passages I’d ever read.
I could relate to Laura’s wonderment about the world.
Ugh, those books made such an impact on me too. I still remember the Wakefield’s “perfect size 6”. I was a slim girl- I was so proud of being that size or below. When I surpassed it, I felt badly. I’ve even told my husband about this. I was a reader of both Babysitter’s Club and SVH (and Sweet Valley Twins). I related to Elizabeth… apart from sharing a name with her, she was a good student and into journalism like me.
I have to say about the Anne books–I loved them too, and read them over and over. There was just something that hit me the last time I read them–starting in one book in particular (think it’s the one where she’s in college?) where it seemed very obvious to me that pretty=good and not pretty=bad and pretty excused a multitude of sins. I’m not usually that sensitive, but something hit me the wrong way. (Wish I could pull up the specific example, but alas, I only kept the first two books).
And of course, I never over-react (ha).
I can’t remember the last time I even saw the Babysitters Club books in a bookstore… :-(
Mo Pie, we must be the same age and have had the exact same peer influences. Reading VC Andrews and SVH is probably why I am a mental case & scarred for life. I’m so mad at my mom for not burning those books. What will I ever do to keep my daughter from reading absolute crap like that when she becomes a preteen??? It would be like watching her ingest poison.
Yeah, the size has nothing to do with why it’s crap. It’s judging others and being cruel to them and having negative self image no matter how you look.
Eh, it’s just vanity sizing. And unless they’re wearing a perfect DESIGNER size six, it’s not even that much of an “impossible goal.”
When I was in high school, in the 80s, I wore a size 12. I thought I was fat at the time, but I weighed 125. I could’ve maybe stood to exercise more. Since then, I’ve been up and I’ve been down. Right now I weigh about 150 — and I can sometimes fit into a size 6 off the mall racks, especially in skirts and dresses.
I certainly can’t fit into any of my old high school clothes any more. As Natalie says, the sizes are only a tiny part of why those books suck, anyway. They’re poorly written, and foster all kinds of unrealistic expectations.
Actually, I’d like to point out that, in the industry, everyone knows that there is NO SUCH THING as a “size 4” woman. The first thing taught in any apparel product development class is that every clothing company uses a different set of sizes that have no correlation whatsoever to anything. Some companies don’t even keep their size consistent within their own lines (Did you know that H&M sometimes makes their size 10’s bigger than their size 12’s in the same style of pants?). There’s no federal regulation or anything, so women’s sizes mean nothing.
This fact makes this “She’s a perfect size 4” even more reprehensible, as there is NO SUCH THING. No woman can ever aspire to be something that the apparel industry itself known doesn’t exist.
US sizes are really misleading I think. When I was over there last year I tried on jeans that were apparently a UK 10 (size 6 US, I think?) but they were really big. So I tried the 4 and that was huge too. It didn’t make me feel all good about myself – it made me feel annoyed that I’d wasted time trying on jeans that should have fitted me!
I tend to agree that it’s mostly vanity sizing — it’s not that the girls are any smaller — although of course, girls are bigger on average now, so compared to average-sized girls, they are smaller if they’re the same size…if you see my point.
I think what it does, and this is why I agree with Erin, is that it underscores just how important it is that the girls be substantially smaller than average — that in order to be aspirational, to be classified as “pretty” for the purposes of the story, they have to be small. Not fit, not not-fat, but notably thin. Thinner than many readers are ever going to get. A size four may not be universally unrealistic, but it’s unrealistic for many girls and isn’t a naturally healthy size for many others.
I think the change to the size four — no, no, they can’t be a big fat six, they have to be a FOUR — serves, to me, as a reminder that it’s so important that they be markedly thin. Why can’t they be sixes? Why is that important?
I’m not so much insulted by the fact that they have to be fours now as I am incensed to be reminded what a big damn deal the people behind the books apparently think their six-ness was in the first place.
I don’t know — I remember specifically a scene in one of the Laura Ingalls Wilder books where the fact that Pa could span Ma’s waist with his two hands was held up as a wonderful, amazing thing. That stuck with me because, even at that age, there was no way a man would be able to span my waist without using his arms.
Of course, now that I think about it, maybe Pa had freakishly huge ogre hands. That’s a good way to interpret it.
@ Robotitron; I remember that scene, too. Back then they started corseting little girls at about 3 months of age, so by the time Ma was an adult, her ribs would have been cracked and broken dozens of times and her insides completely rearranged so she could have the socially-accepted 14-inch-waist of the period. If you didn’t wear such corsetry back then, you were considered a slut. In fact, this is where the term “loose woman” comes from; a woman who doesn’t wear a corset.
hanyou-no-miko> Actually corsetting doesn’t break your ribs. Ribcages are pretty flexible, especially in women, and especially when you’re young, so just wearing a not-terribly-restrictive shaping corset enough will mould a body. Even modern tightlacing enthusiasts, who didn’t start until they were adults, don’t have ribs that have been broken.
The 14 inch waist was an extreme rarity, costume historians know from extant records and old corset measurements that waists were generally from 20-26 inches when fashionably corsetted. Remember also that people were physically smaller in Victorian times, so Ma Ingalls might well have had a Pa Ingalls hand-span waist, especially if he was a bigger man. There was also a kind of vanity sizing going on – a fashion victim of the day might buy an 18″ waist corset even though she couldn’t lace it up properly.
And most women did not even tightlace. They wore a comfortably-fitting corset for everyday support (it being pre-bra days), and maybe a tighter one for special occasions, like modern women might wear jeans and t-shirts most days but put on a dress with Spanx and a push-up bra and high heels for a party.
Many of our popular ideas about corsets actually come from Victorian men’s “newsletters” which were about fetishising the corset and tiny waist, and were basically full of fantastical stories presented as “facts”; also from satires mocking women’s fashions.
AND! “Loose woman” does NOT come from a woman with a loose corset. It’s from the Bible, and actally means a divorced woman – a woman “loosed” from the rule of her husband and who technically becomes an “adulteress” if she takes up with another man while her first husband’s still alive.
La di Da> Ah, yeah, hyperbole doesn’t communicate very well online, I suppose. I should have phrased that better than I did to convey that.
The loose woman part, though, was not hyperbole, and was something I learned in a dress history class. If that is incorrect, then, it is at least something I heard from a very reputable source.
First time I came across this site (which rocks my world, btw) and I felt compelled to comment. As a pre-teen with a screwed up family life, an incredibly awkward body, and no long term friends from moving around (4 different junior high schools total), I relied on books.
They were an escape, yes, but in many cases I learned about social expectations and interactions from them. I read literally all of the books listed above, and they do vary in how women are presented and what ideals are espoused. That being said….at 8 years old I knew that I didn’t ever want to be bigger than a size 6, because that was what Jess and Elizabeth were and that was perfect. This was certainly compounded by my mom’s insecurities, my own experiences, etc, but it was my firm belief that those twins were the SHIT and I wanted to be just like them.
There was only one example that I can recall where there was a larger girl (I think her name was Rhonda, but that might just be due to the prevalence of “Big Rhonda” in TV and movies – think about it, there’s Big Rhonda from That ’70s Show, Big Rhonda from Saved by the Bell, and I think a character named Big Rhonda in the Transformers move, but I digress)
Anyway let’s assume her name was Rhonda, she had a crush on rich jerk Bruce Patman but of course he mocked her for being fat. Then she got determined to prove him wrong, ran laps every day, showed up in some rainbow print leotard with matching hair scrunchie one day, and Bruce was so bowled over by this stunning goddess that he literally walked right into a closed door. Lesson learned? Guys make fun if you’re fat, then like you if you’re skinny. Even the good guys are apparently like this, because all of those girls were described as slender, hot in a bikini, etc, and the good guys flocked to them – or at least Elizabeth and her BFFs from the damn newspaper.
That was a lovely recap of teen serial books huh? Anyway, I still adore Sweet Valley High but have always taken issue with the size thing, and now more than ever you would think that the authors/publishers/whoever could be a bit more sensitive to the reality of most girls today. I mean the twins already were hot, had a great family, were smart, socially skilled, lots of dates….I didn’t need a specific size number to compare myself to. I guess I feel like that’s when it crosses the line from an ideal that we like to imagine ourselves as, and feeling shitty because the ideal is so unrealistic.
(climbing off my soapbox now, thanks for listening)
I read a lot more Babysitter’s Club and V.C. Andrews books than I did SVH when I was a kid, but I read a couple of them. (And I decided they were kinda dumb.)
Sue, you’re pretty close: “A 6 then is like a 2 now, not a 4. Apparently the twins have gained weight.”
I learned about what size is “preferable” as a child when I read a comic strip that had a young girl saying to her mother: “Mommy, when I grow up, I want to be just like you, except wear a size 6.” (Mom looks perplexed, of course.) Did anyone else see that one?
But yes, vanity sizing and not having any sort of standard for sizing pisses me off. In my closet I have XL, L, M, S and XS. All of them. I’m a size 6. And an 8 and a 4 too. Last week I bought my first size 2 jeans. And that’s just my waist & hips, don’t get me started on how my bust is a size 12 or 6 or 8.
They should start making clothing labels that say. “Just try it on. We have ‘skinny mirrors’ for your convenience.”
This is never easy.
When I was younger I used to love the Sweet Valley books. I’m happy to say they didn’t affect me, except getting me more interested in reading.
But I must say, it IS the labeling. In just the last 10 to 15 years I’ve noticed that the clothing labels have changed. Months ago my mom and my aunt and myself went through some of my mom’s older clothing, and stuff that was labeled ‘Medium’ would be ‘XL’ now, 8 would be 12 now, etc.
Well I’m a size 4 in tops and a size 6 in bottoms and dresses. I wonder what that makes me. Half perfect I suppose. Lol. :)